Here’s one thing terrorists have learned since 9/11 – and it should scare us all

America had never seen terrorism on a grand scale like it did when commercial airliners struck New York City and Washington DC. And, too, for the Islamic terrorist, 9/11 was a significant score for their cause. But it’s what terror groups, like ISIS, have learned in the last 15 years that should shake us to the core.

There have been no repeats of 9/11’s astronomical casualties, at least not on a single day. The United States has been on high alert ever since, waiting for the next big terror attack. We’ve waited for thousands of hours in airport lines and unconstitutional screenings to prevent another hijacking. And yet, none have happened.

At the same time, terror organizations have been trying their best to recreate another 9/11-style attack but haven’t been successful. So, they had to change tactics and what they’ve figured out could prove even deadlier if we don’t do something and quick.

David French at National Review explains:

Terrorists are finally figuring it out. They now understand exactly how easy it is to kill Americans and Europeans at home, rather than in the Middle East. Early in my military career, a wise officer told me something that haunts me to this day. “Our great advantage,” he said, “Is the jihadists haven’t discovered how easy we are to attack.” In other words, they kept going for the big score — the next 9/11 — rather than realizing that a massacre was one gun or one truck or one pressure cooker away.

Here is how it plays out by the numbers: “In the year since [the terror attacks in] Chattanooga, America has suffered more than double the number of domestic-terror casualties it suffered in the previous fourteen years going back to 9/11,” David writes.

In France, it’s even worse. Not including the recent deaths in the Nice attack, 236 innocents have been killed and another 588 wounded. These small-scale attacks are now ISIS’s go-to strategy for its jihad. And in many ways, they are more terrifying because they pop up out of nowhere and have increased in frequency. The Western world’s response, so far, has been terrible and our weakness has emboldened our common enemy.

David gets the last word:

When allied Western armies should be tearing down jihadist flags in downtown Raqqa and Mosul — when our own immigration officials and our allies’ border guards should be turning away migrants from conflict zones and relocating them to the newly pacified regions of their home countries — we instead do everything wrong. Populist Right and timid Left both shun the necessary foreign interventions as “neoconservative,” while gullible progressives keep believing that mass migration from jihad-infested regions is somehow compatible with domestic peace and liberal values.

So expect the terror attacks to continue, if not escalate. So long as jihadist safe havens remain abroad and large numbers of extremists live in the West, we’re only a half-step away from seeing actual urban guerilla warfare in Europe’s great cities. Weak horses don’t win wars.